Update Against Hunger - July 20, 2005
Field Notes:
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No Mother Theresa Types |
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Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member, |
The most frequent misconception that I encounter about Action Against Hunger is that we are either missionaries or saints. We are neither. We have no religious gospel to spread (our Charter of Principles emphasizes our non-religious stance), and if you hang around with my teammates long enough or late enough in the evening you'll soon realize we're not saints. All of us who work for Action Against Hunger believe in what we do with fierce pride and commitment. Even so, many of us find our deepest satisfaction discovering the ordinary humanity we share with our beneficiaries and with each other.
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger (ACF) USA
New from US Headquarter:
Student Fundraising and "The Fast for Awareness"
Three years ago, the Henry M. Gunn High School Key Club in Palo Alto, California, staged a Fast for Awareness as a money-raiser for Action Against Hunger and amassed nearly $5,000 contributed by the community. Members of the club have staged a similar fast each year since, earning roughly the same amount for us annually. Each fast lasts 30 hours, from 6 a.m. Friday to noon Saturday. The kids are allowed water and juice, but no food. They solicit sponsorships for fasting while experiencing something similar to what many in the world feel daily. The fasters remain in the school gym, a food-free environment, where they participate in a distracting and educational schedule of activities, games, videos, and speeches.
Inspired by their financial and conscience-raising success, the Key Club has written a guide for other schools to follow in setting up similar fasts. You can read the ACF Student Guide as a PDF. Best of all, their model is inspiring students elsewhere. Recently, the University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois, followed the Key Club's formula and raised $1,691 for us.
Thanks to everyone who didn't eat. We're delighted to have you alongside us in our struggle.
Our colleague, Gentil Luoko Kikuzi, one of our watchmen in Baraka, Eastern Congo, passed away from an advanced respiratory infection. Gentil was gentle, honest, loyal, and couldn't have been kinder. He was determined to educate himself and advance his career, on his last vacation, he took computer training in Bukavu. He was a truly good man with a genuinely warm character.
News from the field:
The Struggle to Assist in Southern Sudan
Bringing aid to Southern Sudan poses a daunting challenge. On both sides of the upper Nile and spreading eastward is a swamp that in the rainy season becomes larger than France. There are no villages in this part of the world and no roads that are accessible year-round. The population is spread sparsely, often with many miles of wilderness separating families.
Last year, we ran a Therapeutic Feeding Center in South Sudan that reached 100 beneficiaries and a Supplemental Feeding Center that aided 400. We also trained herders in improved cattle-farming techniques and conducted nutritional surveys to guide other non-governmental organizations, both local and international. But the region's geography kept us from helping more.
This year, as peace between North and South Sudan is convincing a wave of Sudanese refugees to return to their homes, we plan to operate west of the Nile, where access is less problematic and the population is more concentrated. According to our surveys, the malnutrition rate there is 30.1%one of the most catastrophic rates anywhere in the world and twice the 15% that constitutes an emergency.
Six weeks ago we opened a Therapeutic Feeding Center that we expected would aid 200 beneficiaries in its first year. It has already reached 174. At the end of the month, we'll open two Supplemental Feeding Centers that we project will aid 800 beneficiaries. We're also planning two more TFCs for 600 beneficiaries and enough additional SFCs to reach 6,000 more. Southern Sudan needs us desperately, and we're on our way.
Person Profile:
ProfileCharito Jarina
Charito Jarina's father, a civil engineer, pursued better jobs around the world. So although Charito was born in the Philippines, she and her family left when she was four years old, moving first to Nauru (an independent South Pacific island republic), then to Australia and finally to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where her family settled and she entered the fourth grade.
When she turned 18, however, Charito moved to New York City to become a performer--actor, singer, dancer--and discovered quickly that being a starving artist held no appeal. So she took action against her hunger and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, majoring in advertising and communications. "But after the tsunami," she says, "I wanted to do something more meaningful than advertising." She found Action Against Hunger on the Internet and learned that we needed a marketing intern. So she applied to work at our headquarters for the summer.
Charito is working chiefly on events for us, in particular a project for World Food Day in October that will duplicate a public display that our French headquarters stages annually in Paris. This event will fill a public square with human silhouettes made out of plywood that participants knock down one by one every four seconds to illustrate how frequently someone in the world dies of hunger. Charito is seeking a location for the U.S. version, either in New York or in Washington, D.C. She has also been evolving a budget for the event, as well as sending out proposals to donors for supplies.
In September, she'll return to FIT and graduate in December. She hopes to find enough time on the side to continue helping us with our World Food Day event and our November Gala. But she says: "My goal right now is to graduate and to travel." So after graduation, Charito will explore Asia (Hong Kong, the Philippines, Bangkok and India) and then consider seriously what she'll do next.
